The Scottish aquaculture industry must remember the need to protect its unique selling point, the UK's leading aquaculture event has been told.

Andy Rosie, a senior official from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, said Scotland's industry depended on the "Crown Jewels" - the high-quality "pristine" conditions at sites used by many farms for the production of their salmon.

Mr Rosie told over up to 200 delegates at the Aquaculture Today 2005 conference in Edinburgh's Marriott Hotel that to do anything that was not respectful of the environment risked losing the industry's reputation for high quality produce.

Later, during a question and answer session with delegates, he admitted that there had been a plethora of recent changes to waste legislation, emanating from Brussels, which the industry now has to cope with. Asked by one delegate what sort of dissemination strategy SEPA was using to get the message out over the new rules, Mr Rosie said it was working on new guides to the rules. He however admitted that SEPA felt sometimes constrained, as the policeman of the industry, in offering advice on how to comply with the rules. This potential conflict of interest, he accepted, did place limits on the ability of SEPA to help companies comply with what is being asked of them.

Aquaculture Today 2005 is a two day conference at the Edinburgh Marriott Hotel organised by the leading scientific news journal Fish Farmer magazine.

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